by Tom Perrotta
“Go ahead,” she told me. “Wear whatever you want. As far as I'm concerned you can get married in that stupid uniform. But I'm not going to spend a penny to send you to Catholic school.”
“It's not that expensive,” I protested. “I'll get a part-time job.”
“The money's not the issue. It's a matter of principle.”
Aside from Paul, Lisa, and maybe Jason, no one at Winwood understood that I was wearing my uniform for a reason. Everyone just thought I was hilarious, especially the boys. Some of them started calling me “Sister Tammy” and making the sign of the cross when they passed me in the hall. Pretty soon lots of people were doing it.
It was my English teacher who finally complained. Miss Benson used to be a nun, and I guess she thought I was making fun of Catholics, even though this was the furthest thing from my mind.
Poor Mr. Hendricks had to call me into his office for another one of our conferences. He seemed to have aged a lot over the past month or so. I noticed a slight tremor in his hand when he reached for his Styrofoam cup.
“Listen,” he said, “it's time to retire this getup of yours.”
“Why?” I asked, playing dumb. “Have you instituted a dress code?”
He pressed his fingertips to his temples and moved them in circles.
“Don't push me, Tammy. My head feels like someone's been pounding spikes into it.”
“I'm wearing a skirt, blouse, and knee socks. Does that violate some sort of regulation?”
“Some people are religious,” he told me, “and they don't go for this sort of baloney. So do me a favor and lose the uniform, okay?”
I felt sorry for Mr. Hendricks. If I could have, I would've loved to help him out.
“What happens if I don't?
“You know the drill.”
So I wore the uniform the next day and he suspended me for the third time in as many months, supposedly for “disruptive behavior.” My mother went ballistic.
“You want to go to Catholic school?” she screamed. “Fine. Go to Catholic school. But don't come crying to me when they start whacking you with a ruler.”
MR. M.
THE FIRST REPORTER called during dinner. She was from the West Plains Herald, and could barely conceal her excitement.
“Mr. McAllister, is it true you tried to steal a high school election?”
“No comment,” I said, and hung up the phone.
It rang again a few seconds later.
“One question, sir. Could you explain your hatred of Tracy Flick?”
“I don't hate her,” I said, and hung up again. This time I pulled out the jack.
So at least I had some advance warning. It saved me from being completely blindsided when the next morning's paper thudded onto my doorstep with a picture of Tracy smiling up from the front page. I stood on the porch in my robe and slippers, and read the article—“Scandal Mars School Election”—with the most powerful sense of unreality I'd ever experienced:
Students and faculty at Winwood High were stunned today by reports that a popular teacher reportedly tried to rig yesterday's election for President of the Student Government Association.
“This is America,” said one tearful junior, who asked not to be identified. “This isn't supposed to happen here.”
According to a highly placed administrator at the school, the teacher, James T. McAllister, allegedly dumped an undisclosed number of ballots into a trash can in order to ensure the election of his own hand-picked candidate. The fraud would have gone undetected but for an eagle-eyed janitor who discovered the missing ballots during a routine cleanup.
“It was pure luck,” said Joseph Delvecchio, the fifty four-year-old custodian who made the surprising discovery. “Otherwise he would have got away with it.”
McAllister's motives in the alleged vote-tampering incident remain unclear. In a brief interview with the Herald, the popular history teacher denied widespread rumors that he bore a long-standing grudge against Tracy Flick, 17, who was named President of the Student Government Association today in an early morning ceremony.
“I don't hate her,” McAllister insisted.
School officials refused to comment about potential disciplinary actions aimed at the teacher.
“He's a sensible man,” said one administration official. “Maybe he'll do the decent thing and resign.”
I must have read the article three times over before looking up. A woman I'd never seen before was standing on the sidewalk in front of my house, waiting for her basset hound to finish shitting on my lawn. She looked me straight in the eye, daring me to object, her mouth curling into a contemptuous smile. I tucked the paper under my arm and went inside.
It only got worse. The story got picked up by the wire services, and for a day or two it was everywhere. Not headline news, but a curiosity, something people could listen to and shake their heads about. NPR used it as one of their human interest squibs. Peter Jennings arched his eyebrows as he reported it, as if to suggest that even he was surprised by this one. The New York Post reprinted Tracy's picture, along with the caption “She Wuz Robbed!”
Diane stood by me through the entire ordeal, never once flinching in her support. In a way, I think she was grateful for my humiliation. It sort of evened things out between us, making it easier for her to forgive me for my little fling with Sherry, who didn't even bother to call and say she was sorry to hear about my troubles.
Mercifully, the story had a short life. Riots struck L.A. that same week, and for a long time the country forgot about everything but that. It's awful to admit, but I felt a powerful sense of relief every time I turned on the TV and saw buildings going up in flames, and that poor man being dragged out of his truck.
14
LISA FLANAGAN
PAUL AND I broke up about a month after the election. It wasn't that we stopped liking each other. We just sort of ran out of things to talk about.
The summer that followed was a strange, lonely, oddly exciting time for me. I went running early in the morning, when the world was still damp and cool, then spent the day hanging around the house, reading and watching TV. Three or four nights a week I worked in the Carvel ice cream store in downtown West Plains. That was my entire social life, waiting on customers and goofing around with the other people who worked there.
The only thing that kept me going was the national election, which I followed the way some guys I know follow baseball. A whole new world of information cracked wide open, one source leading naturally to another—the Times, The New Republic, The McLaughlin Group, Crossfire, Gergen and Shields. There was always something new to read, another debate to watch, more expert analysis.
All I lacked was someone to share it with, a friend who cared about the campaign even half as much as I did. Sometimes I'd hear about college kids working for the candidates, and it seemed so vital and glamorous, so much more significant than crowning a hot fudge sundae with a maraschino cherry. I fantasized constantly about running away, hopping a Greyhound to Little Rock to volunteer my services, going sleepless for a good cause, waking up red-eyed and tongue-sore after licking envelopes until five in the morning.
My mother was the only person I saw on a regular basis, and she didn't have a lot to offer in the way of scintillating conversation, at least not the kind I needed. The political process didn't just bore her, it offended her. I remember her walking into the living room one night and staring at the screen for a couple of seconds with an expression of unmitigated disgust, like she'd caught me watching pornography.
“Who is this guy?” she asked.
“You're joking, right?”
She shook her head. “I see him all the time, but I have no idea who he is.”
“Mom,” I said, “what planet are you on? That's Marlin Fitzwater, the President's spokesman.”
It amazed me that a grown woman could be so thoroughly clueless. She reminded me of those people who crawl out from under their rocks to sit on the really important juries, the on
es who've never seen the Rodney King video and swear they've never heard the name of William Kennedy Smith. Whenever I asked who she was going to vote for, she just shrugged and said it didn't really matter.
“They're all the same.”
“They're not the same, Mom. Don't you read the papers?”
“Honey,” she'd say, “I think you need a boyfriend. When you were with Paul, you were a much nicer person.”
I was working at Carvel one night in July, about a week before the Democratic National Convention, when Mr. M. walked into the store. I almost didn't recognize him. In school he'd been a sharp dresser—baggy pants, denim shirts, bright flowered ties. Now he just looked anonymous, a tired man in a rumpled gray suit, generic tie loose around his open collar.
“Lisa,” he said, stiffening with surprise. “I didn't know you worked here.”
“Just for the summer. It gets me out of the house.”
“I know the feeling.” He smiled sheepishly and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I'm selling cars now. Over at Griffin Chevrolet.”
“Do you like it?”
He thought hard before answering, like no one had ever asked him this before.
“It's okay. Better than I expected. But you really have to hustle.”
All at once, I'm not sure why, this wave of embarrassment came washing over me. Our past expanded in that bright cool space until it seemed to be everywhere, like the smell of ice cream. Not just the election or the fact that he'd lost his job, but everything—me and Paul, me and Tammy, things Mr. M. had said in class that I knew I'd never forget.
“Urn … Can I help you?”
“Vanilla cone,” he said. “Sprinkles if you've got them.”
“Small, medium, or large?”
“Doesn't matter. Medium, I guess.”
I grabbed a wafer cone off the top of the stack and yanked the lever on the soft-serve machine. A rope of ice cream came chugging out. Against store policy, I filled the whole cone, from the bottom up.
“How's Paul?” he asked.
“Okay, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“We broke up.”
He seemed surprised. Most people reacted that way. Paul and I looked like a great couple to the outside world, but we weren't that great together. After a while, all we really knew how to do with each other was have sex. It got a little tedious.
“I'm sorry to hear it,” he said.
“It's okay. We're still friends.”
I twirled the cone through the sprinkle tray and passed it over the counter. After I rang up the sale and gave him his change, I realized I wasn't nervous anymore.
Mr. M. pointed at his cone. He ate it like a kid, slurping from the top instead of licking from the bottom.
“Can I buy you one?”
“No, thanks. I'm so sick of ice cream you wouldn't believe it.”
He took another slurp. There was a sprinkle attached to his bottom lip.
“Not me. Never get sick of ice cream.”
He didn't seem to be in any big hurry to leave. A funny thought popped into my head, something I'd been curious about for a long time.
“Mr. M.,” I said, “what's your opinion of George Will?”
“George Will?” He plucked a napkin from the dispenser and wiped his mouth. “What about him?”
“I've been wondering. Do you think he's as smart as he seems?”
“Does he seem smart to you?”
“Very. But there's one thing that bothers me. If he's so smart, why doesn't he run for office?”
Mr. M.'s face lit up with pleasure. I could see him sitting on his desk, tossing a piece of chalk into the air and catching it without looking.
“George Will's a pundit,” he said, making it sound like that was the lowest form of life in the animal kingdom. “He wouldn't have the guts to run for dogcatcher.”
“Why not?”
“Because he'd lose. He's too intellectual. He's an egghead, like Adlai Stevenson.”
“Who?”
“Adlai Stevenson. The Democrat who ran against Eisenhower. Read up on him. Then you'll have the answer to your question about George Will.”
When he finished his cone, there was no excuse for him to stay any longer. He stuffed his crumpled napkin into the wastebasket and looked up.
“I'm sorry, Lisa. About what happened back there.”
“That's okay. You don't have to apologize to me.”
“Thanks,” he said. “It's nice of you to say that.”
The next day I went to the library and checked out a biography of Adlai Stevenson. It was slow going at first, but then I got to like it. All summer long I kept waiting for Mr. M. to come back to Carvel so we could talk about it, but he never showed up.
MR. M.
THE JOB OFFER from Frank Griffin, Jr., came at the perfect time, when I thought I was about to go crazy from boredom and anxiety. I'm just not made for moping around the house. I need to be out in the world—meeting people, asking questions, filling a place in the loud, messy machinery of society.
I'd spent the whole month of May wrestling with the question of what to do with my life. My three most desperate and promising options—teaching English in Japan, relocating to Alaska, applying to law school—all dissolved in the daydream phase, eclipsed by a surprising development: Diane was pregnant. All that hard work had finally paid off.
Our happiness—and we were happy, for the first time in recent memory—was edged with a bright border of panic. The economy was rotten. Even if we wanted to sell our house and move someplace cheaper, there was no guarantee we could find a buyer. Diane was hoping to take a year off after the birth, but it was hard to see how we were going to swing that under the present circumstances.
All I really knew was that I needed to find a new job, and find it fast. I spent hours wide awake at night, tormenting myself with worst-case scenarios—I'm a Night Manager at Burger King, ridiculed by my teenage employees; I'm planted in the frozen aisle at the Price Club, gamely offering a tray of microwave stuffed mushrooms to passing shoppers; I'm driving a Mr. Softee truck that plays the same insane jingle over and over, eight hundred times a day.
Frank was a former student of mine, a member of the first class I'd ever taught at Winwood. A completely forgettable kid. From the day he graduated to the night he called, he hadn't crossed my mind a single time.
“Frank Griffin,” I said, fruitlessly searching my mind for a face to match the name. “What have you been up to?”
“I'm the sales manager at my father's dealership. Griffin Chevrolet Geo on West Plains Boulevard. That's why I'm calling. I wanted to run something by you.”
“What's that?”
“Well, I … I heard about your trouble, and I want you to know how sorry I am. You were the best teacher I ever had.”
I'd received three or four calls like this from former students, and it's hard for me to explain how good they made me feel. And sad. So much of my identity was still bound up with teaching. It was the only thing I'd ever excelled at.
“Thanks, Frank. I really appreciate your saying that.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “I'm not sure what you're doing right now, but I was wondering if you'd ever considered sales.”
“I haven't,” I admitted. “But right now I'm willing to consider anything.”
If he heard the implicit insult, he chose to ignore it.
“We're looking for someone,” he said. “I think you'd be perfect for the job.”
“Why's that?”
“All a good salesman really needs is to listen hard and ask the right questions. It's basically what a teacher does. Just for a different purpose.”
So I drove to West Plains the next afternoon, and Frank showed me around the lot. He was a bald, fleshy guy, one of those kids who turned middle-aged the day he received his high-school diploma. I was especially impressed by the Geos, which he told me were more or less identical to Toyotas, but sold for thousands of dollars less.
&
nbsp; “It's a smart buy,” he said. “All you have to do is give people the wherewithal to see that for themselves.”
At the end of the visit, he brought me into a woodpaneled office in the showroom and introduced me to his father. Frank Griffin, Sr., was an imposing figure, large of belly and pink of face, like an old-time machine politician.
“So what do you think?” he asked me. “You want to give it a shot?”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
“Great.” He stuck out his hand. “Welcome aboard.”
I was startled by the suddenness of the agreement, and wanted to make sure they weren't taking me on under false pretenses.
“There's only one problem,” I confessed. “I don't know anything about cars.”
“Don't worry about it,” Frank junior assured me. “You're a smart guy. You'll be up to speed in no time.”
He was right, too. I studied the sales material, attended a weekend training seminar, and kept my ears open around the lot. By the end of the summer, I was a thoroughly competent and moderately successful salesman. Sensible cars were my specialty—Prizms, Cavaliers, the Lumina van. I didn't do so well with our sportier models. Something about my personality, I guess.
It's actually kind of exciting. A cheaper high than teaching, but a high nonetheless. There's a lot of psychology involved, and just enough seduction to keep things interesting. You have to know when to talk and when to shut up, when to be a cheerleader and when to play hardball. Diane used to joke that I was getting in touch with my own inner asshole, but all I was really doing was claiming my American birthright. There's a sales professional lying dormant in each and every one of us, just waiting for a chance to blossom.
As long as I'm with customers, I like the job. The only thing I hate is the dead time, hanging around like a vulture waiting for a carcass to turn up. That's when I remember how far I've fallen. When Rudy Francis starts telling nigger jokes and Stan Unfall brags about “porking” his wife. When Frank junior slaps me on the back and calls me “Professor.”